Question No.

1
Define computer networks? Discuss various types of networks topologies in
computer network. Also discuss various advantages and disadvantages of each
topology.

Answer:-
‘‘Computer network'' to mean a collection of autonomous computers interconnected by a single
technology. Two computers are said to be interconnected if they are able to exchange
information. The old model of a single computer serving all of the organization's computational
needs has been replaced by one in which a large number of separate but interconnected
computers do the job. These systems are called computer networks.

Network topologies:
Network topology defined as the logical connection of various computers in the network.
The six basic network topologies are: bus, ring, star, tree, mesh and hybrid.
1. Bus Topology:
In bus topology all the computers are connected to a long cable called a bus. A node that wants
to send data puts the data on the bus which carries it to the destination node. In this topology any
computer can data over the bus at any time. Since, the bus is shared among all the computers.
When two or more computers to send data at the same time, an arbitration mechanism are needed
to prevent simultaneous access to the bus.

BUS TOPOLOGY
A bus topology is easy to install but is not flexible i.e., it is difficult to add a new node to bus. In
addition to this the bus stops functioning even if a portion of the bus breaks down. It is also very
difficult to isolate fault.

2. Ring Topology:
In ring topology, the computers are connected in the form of a ring. Each node has exactly two
adjacent neighbors. To send data to a distant node on a ring it passes through many intermediate
nodes to reach to its ultimate destination.
A ring topology is as to install and reconfigure. In this topology, fault isolation is easy because a
signal that circulates all the time in a ring helps in identifying a faulty node. The data
transmission takes place in only one direction. When a node fails in ring, it breaks down the
whole ring. To overcome this drawback some ring topologies use dual rings. The topology is not
useful to connect large number of computers.

3. Star Topology:
In star topology all the nodes are connected to a central node called a hub. A node that wants to
send some six data to some other node on the network, send data to a hub which in turn sends it
the destination node. A hub plays a major role in such networks.

STAR TOPOLOGY
Star topology is easy to install and reconfigure. If a link fails then it separates the node connected
to link from the network and the network continues to function. However, if the hub goes down,
the entire network collapses.
4. Tree Topology:
Tree topology is a hierarchy of various hubs. The entire nodes are connected to one hub or the
other. There is a central hub to which only a few nodes are connected directly. The central hub,
also called active hub, looks at the incoming bits and regenerates them so that they can traverse
over longer distances. The secondary hubs in tree topology may be active hubs or passive hubs.
The failure of a transmission line separates a node from the network.
5. Mesh Topology:
A mesh topology is also called complete topology. In this topology, each node is connected
directly to every oilier node in the network. That is if there are n nodes then there would be
n(n — 1)/2 physical links in the network.
As there are dedicated links, the topology does not have congestion problems. Further it does not
need a special Media Access Control (MAC) protocol to prevent simultaneous access to the
transmission media since links are dedicated, not shared. The topology also provides data
security. The network can continue to function even in the failure of one of the links. Fault
identification is also easy. The main disadvantage of mesh topology is the complexity of the
network and the cost associated with the cable length. The mesh topology is not useful for
medium to large networks.

MESH TOPOLOGY
6. Hybrid Topology:
Hybrid topology is formed by connecting two or more topologies together. For example, hybrid
topology can be created by using the bus, star and ring topologies

HYBRID TOPOLOGY
Question No. 4
Explain the following:-
a) LAN
b) MAN
c) WAN
d) ARPANET
Answer: - a) LAN-Local Area Networks

Local area networks, generally called LANs, are privately-owned networks within a single
building or campus of up to a few kilometers in size. They are widely used to connect personal
computers and workstations in company offices and factories to share resources (e.g., printers)
and exchange information. LANs are distinguished from other kinds of networks by three
characteristics:
(1) Their size,
(2) Their transmission technology, and
(3) Their topology.
LANs are restricted in size, which means that the worst-case transmission time is bounded and
known in advance. Knowing this bound makes it possible to use certain kinds of designs that
would not otherwise be possible. It also simplifies network management. LANs may use a
transmission technology consisting of a cable to which all the machines are attached, like the
telephone company party lines once used in rural areas. Traditional LANs run at speeds of 10
Mbps to 100 Mbps, have low delay (microseconds or nanoseconds), and make very few errors.

Newer LANs operate at up to 10 Gbps various topologies are possible for broadcast LANs.
Figure1 shows two of them. In a bus (i.e., a linear cable) network, at any instant at most one
machine is the master and is allowed to transmit. All other machines are required to refrain from
sending. An arbitration mechanism is needed to resolve conflicts when two or more machines
want to transmit simultaneously. The arbitration mechanism may be centralized or distributed.
IEEE 802.3, popularly called Ethernet, for example, is a bus-based broadcast network with
decentralized control, usually operating at 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps. Computers on an Ethernet can
transmit whenever they want to; if two or more packets collide, each computer just waits a
random time and tries again later.
A second type of broadcast system is the ring. In a ring, each bit propagates around on its own,
not waiting for the rest of the packet to which it belongs. Typically, each bit circumnavigates the
entire ring in the time it takes to transmit a few bits, often before the complete packet has even
been transmitted. As with all other broadcast systems, some rule is needed for arbitrating
simultaneous accesses to the ring. Various methods, such as having the machines take turns, are
in use. IEEE 802.5 (the IBM token ring), is a ring-based LAN operating at 4 and 16 Mbps. FDDI
is another example of a ring network.

b) Metropolitan Area Network:

A metropolitan area network, or MAN, covers a city. The best-known example of a MAN is the
cable television network available in many cities. This system grew from earlier community
antenna systems used in areas with poor over-the-air television reception. In these early systems,
a large antenna was placed on top of a nearby hill and signal was then piped to the subscribers'
houses.

At first, these were locally-designed, ad hoc systems. Then companies began jumping into the
business, getting contracts from city governments to wire up an entire city. The next step was
television programming and even entire channels designed for cable only. Often these channels
were highly specialized, such as all news, all sports, all cooking, all gardening, and so on. But
from their inception until the late 1990s, they were intended for television reception only.
To a first approximation, a MAN might look something like the system shown in Fig.2. In this
figure both television signals and Internet are fed into the centralized head end for subsequent
distribution to people's homes.

Cable television is not the only MAN. Recent developments in high-speed wireless Internet
access resulted in another MAN, which has been standardized as IEEE 802.16. A MAN is
implemented by a standard called DQDB (Distributed Queue Dual Bus) or IEEE 802.16. DQDB
has two unidirectional buses (or cables) to which all the computers are attached.
c) Wide Area Network:
A wide area network, or WAN, spans a large geographical area, often a country or continent. It
contains a collection of machines intended for running user (i.e., application) programs. These
machines are called as hosts. The hosts are connected by a communication subnet, or just subnet
for short. The hosts are owned by the customers (e.g., people's personal computers), whereas the
communication subnet is typically owned and operated by a telephone company or Internet
service provider. The job of the subnet is to carry messages from host to host, just as the
telephone system carries words from speaker to listener. Separation of the pure communication
aspects of the network (the subnet) from the application aspects (the hosts), greatly simplifies the
complete network design.
In most wide area networks, the subnet consists of two distinct components: transmission lines
and switching elements. Transmission lines move bits between machines. They can be made of
copper wire, optical fiber, or even radio links. In most WANs, the network contains numerous
transmission lines, each one connecting a pair of routers. If two routers that do not share a
transmission line wish to communicate, they must do this indirectly, via other routers. When a
packet is sent from one router to another via one or more intermediate routers, the packet is
received at each intermediate router in its entirety, stored there until the required output line is
free, and then forwarded. A subnet organized according to this principle is called a store-and-
forward or packet-switched subnet. Nearly all wide area networks (except those using satellites)
have store-and-forward subnets. When the packets are small and all the same size, they are often
called cells.

The principle of a packet-switched WAN is so important. Generally, when a process on some

host has a message to be sent to a process on some other host, the sending host first cuts the
message into packets, each one bearing its number in the sequence. These packets are then
injected into the network one at a time in quick succession. The packets are transported
individually over the network and deposited at the receiving host, where they are reassembled
into the original message and delivered to the receiving process. A stream of packets resulting
from some initial message is illustrated. In this figure, all the packets follow the route ACE,
rather than ABDE or ACDE. In some networks all packets from a given message must follow the
same route; in others each packed is routed separately. Of course, if ACE is the best route, all
packets may be sent along it, even if each packet is individually routed.

Not all WANs are packet switched. A second possibility for a WAN is a satellite system. Each
router has an antenna through which it can send and receive. All routers can hear the output from
the satellite, and in some cases they can also hear the upward transmissions of their fellow
routers to the satellite as well. Sometimes the routers are connected to a substantial point-to-point
subnet, with only some of them having a satellite antenna. Satellite networks are inherently
broadcast and are most useful when the broadcast property is important.

d) ARPANET:
The subnet would consist of minicomputers called IMPs (Interface Message Processors)
connected by 56-kbps transmission lines. For high reliability, each IMP would be connected to at
least two other IMPs. The subnet was to be a datagram subnet, so if some lines and IMPs were
destroyed, messages could be automatically rerouted along alternative paths.

Each node of the network was to consist of an IMP and a host, in the same room, connected by a
short wire. A host could send messages of up to 8063 bits to its IMP, which would then break
these up into packets of at most 1008 bits and forward them independently toward the
destination. Each packet was received in its entirety before being forwarded, so the subnet was
the first electronic store-and-forward packet-switching network.

ORIGINAL ARPANET DESIGN

Each node of the network was to consist of an IMP and a host, in the same room, connected by a
short wire. A host could send messages of up to 8063 bits to its IMP, which would then break
these up into packets of at most 1008 bits and forward them independently toward the
destination. Each packet was received in its entirety before being forwarded, so the subnet was
the first electronic store-and-forward packet-switching network.

ARPA then put out a tender for building the subnet. Twelve companies bid for it. After
evaluating all the proposals, ARPA selected BBN, a consulting firm in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and in December 1968, awarded it a contract to build the subnet and write the
subnet software. BBN chose to use specially modified Honeywell DDP-316 minicomputers with
12K 16-bit words of core memory as the IMPs. The IMPs did not have disks, since moving parts
were considered unreliable. The IMPs were interconnected by 56-kbps lines leased from
telephone companies. Although 56 kbps is now the choice of teenagers who cannot afford ADSL
or cable, it was then the best money could buy.